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/ 

Philadelphia, Pa., February 1, 1898. 
To the Members^ of the Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish Societi/ : 

Gentlemen' : 

A copy of the report of the proceedings of your Society 
at their eighth annual meeting and banquet, held in Phila- 
delphia, February 27, 1897, has just been sent to me. I 
r notice in it a speecii by Judge Stewart, in which he says that 
'^ I have grossly defamed the Scotch-Irish, and he assails with 
tiie greatest violence, with "indignation and resentment," as 
he puts it, a book of mine, " Pennsylvania : Colony and 
Commonwealth," which was published a year or so ago. 

I heard of the Judge's speech soon after it was delivered. 
Some friends of mine spoke to me of it as a joke, and I sup- 
posed it had been merely ordinary criticism or difference of 
opinion, and, as I did not know of its being published, 
gave myself no further thought about it. I never became 
aware of its full enormity and absurdity until I read 
it a few days ago. I am told that it was still worse as 
delivered, and has been toned down to go in print. But the 
toning did not go far enough. Unless J say something about 
it I shall be in the position of allowing the Judge to falsify 
Pennsylvania history ; for his wild statements now stand 
approved by the whole Scotch-Irish Society, and are given 
out to the world as history in one of their regular publications. 

I do not care to parade the matter in the newspapers 
because, so far as I know. Judge Stewart's speech was not 
in the newspapers. It was delivered to a private society, 
and is now printed in their regular proceedings. I fherefore 
mail a copy of this letter to every member of the Society 
whose address is given in the report which I have. 

The Judge seems to be a survival of those old-time 
cutting and slashing orators we read about; and his knowl- 
edge of history is, as might be expected, highly imaginative. 
Of course, I know that he labored under several serious 
disadvantages. The dinner and its accompaniments had been 

• ' I., 




1085 



in j^rogress for some time before he began. He was almost 
the last speaker, and he tells us in the beginning of his speech 
that he is brought in at the dregs. Under such circumstances 
a man is tempted to do something extravagant to arouse the 
jaded attention, and the best way is to assume 'that the dearest 
interests of his hearers are attaci<ed or defamed, and then pose 
as defending them. This is a good after-dinner device, but 
it is not good for the truth of history. 

He charges in the most extravagant and unjudicial lan- 
guage that I am a " perverter of the truth " of history and 
the author of ** a studied and deliberate libel," and, as an 
instance, says that I have without foundation or authority 
accused the Scotch-lrisji of cowardice when Colonel Bouquet 
was setting out from Carlisle in 1763 to save Fort Pitt, which 
had been taken by Pontiac. 

" With equal recklessness of statement, and in a like 
spirit of unfairness he charges that in 1763 when Bouquet 
passed throu<4h the valley on his way to the Ohio and beyond to 
suppress the conspiracy of Pontiac, this people were too indiffer- 
ent or cowardly to recruit his ranks, and too mean to supply 
him with transportation.' 

^: :|: >{: ^ ;ic ^ ^ 

" I challenge Mr. Fisher again for his proofs that anybody but 
himself has ever made such complaint." 

Now what I actually did say after describing how Bou- 
quet arrived, at Carlisle with the remains of two invalid 
regiments from the West Indies was as follows : 

"Not a man of the Scotch-Irish frontiersmen joined him. 
They were slow at furnishing hiiii with wagons and caused him 
many delays. They were indeed broken and demoralized and 
stayed at home, they said, to protect their families; and, more- 
over, tlfej believed that the Colonel and his sick list were 
doomed. "(" Pennsylvania : Colony and Commonwealth," 225.) 

In the above passage 1 charge no one with cowardice. 
I do not say that they were too mean to furnish transpor- 
tation ; I say they were slow about it, and I give reasons for 
all their conduct which would satisfy any one in a reasonable 
frame of mind. I wrote the passage as it stands, not because 
I am a Quaker, as the Judge says ; I am not a Quaker and 



3 

never was one; nor because I hate tlie Scotch-Irish or am 
prejudiced a2;ainst tliem ; nor for any of the other silly 
motives wliich were assigned at the banquet; but because the 
autiiorities, Bouquet's lettei's and the writings of men who 
lived at the time supyiort such a statement and com})el you to 
write it without regard to what your feelings may be. 

Provost Smith, of the College of Philadelphia, lived at 
that time and was an earnest promoter of all warlike oper- 
ations against the [French and Indians. Judge Stewart says 
he was a Scotch-Irishman ; but that is simply another of the 
Judge's blunders. The Provost wrote, however, a history of 
Bouquet's expedition which he knew all about and I will 
quote what he says on this point : 

" Early orders had been given to prepare a convoy of pro- 
visions on the frontiers of Pennsylvania, but such were the uni- 
versal terror and consternation of the inhabitants that when 
Colonel Bouquet arrived at Carlisle nothing had yet been done. 

In the midst of that general sonfasion, the supplies neces- 
sary for the expedition became very precarious, nor was it less 
difficult to procure horses and carriages for the use of the 

troops. 

* * * >j< ^ t- * 

Their march did not abate the fears of the dejected inhabi- 
tants. They knew the strength and ferocity of the enemy. 
They remembered the former defeats even of our best troops, 
and were full of diffidence and apprehensions on beholding the 
small number and sickly state of the regulars employed in this 
expedition. Without the least hopes, therefore, of success, they 
.seemed only to wait for the fatal event, which they dreaded, to 
abandon all the country beyond the Susquehanna. 

In such despondency of mind, it is not surprising that tho' 
their whole was at stake, and depended entirely upon the fate 
of this little army, none of them offered to assist in the defence 
of the country by joining the expedition ; in which they would 
have been of infinite service, being, in general, well acquainted 
with the woods, and excellent marksmen (' History of Bouquet's 
Expedition,' pp. 10, 11, 12} " 

Parkman, in his " Conspiracy of Pontiac," tells the same 
story. He used Provost Smith's book as his authority, and 
had also some manuscript letters of Bouquet, which, possibly, 
Provost Smith never saw. 



" To return to Bouquet who lay encamped at Carlisle, 
urg'ing on his preparations, but met by obstacles at every step. 
Wagons and horses had been promised, but promises were 
broken, and all was vexation and delay. The province of 
Pennsylvania from causes to be shown hereafter would do 
nothing to aid the troops who were defending it; and even the 
people of the frontier partly from the apathy and confusion of 
terror, and partly, it seems, from dislike and jealousy of the 
regulars were backward and sluggish in co-operating with 
them. 'I hope,' writes Bouquet to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, 'that 
we shall be able to save that infatuated people from destruction 
notwithstanding all their endeavors to defeat your vigorous 
measures. I meet everywhere with the same backwardness 
even among the most exposed of the inhabitants which makes 
everything move on heavily, and is disgusting to the last 
degree." And, again, ' I find myself utterly abandoned by the 
very people I am ordered to protect.'" ("Conspiracy of 
Pontiac," Vol. II., pp. 48, 49.) 

Judge Stewart takes great pains to tell us in his speech 
that he has studied with mucli care tiie history of the Scotch- 
Irish in Pennsylvania, but lie seems to have overlooked the 
most obvious and ordinary authorities with which a single 
visit or inquiry at an historical society or library would have 
supplied him. If he had even taken the trouble to look in 
" Gordon's History of J^ennsylvania '" (a didl book but a very 
accurate one), pages 399 and 400, he would have found the 
statements made in the above cjuotations substantially 
repeated, 

I will ask the Judge's conscience and Scotch-Irish integ- 
rity to say whether, in view of the above authorities, it was 
proper for a man in his position, to charge me, as he does in 
his speech, with " a studied and deliberate libel," or to say 
that I am "a perverter of the truth" of history, and then 
afterwards print such assertions. 

He goes on to say : 

"Mr. Fisher knows, or ought to know, that Bouquet, a 
British officer in command of British troops, called for no 
recruits, and was without any authority to make such a call." 

But Parkmau says : " He had attempted to engage a 
body of frontiersmen to join him on the march ; but they 



l)referred to remain for the defence of tlieir families " (" Con- 
spiracy of Pontiac," Vol. II, p. 56); and I leave the Jndge 
and Parkman to fight it out between them. 

If the Judge was a real Scotch-Irishman, his sense of 
humor, which is usually characteristic of that race, would save 
him from such statements. Bouquet, of course, had no 
authority to compel the Scotch-Irish to serve. Tliat is the 
very point. The Scotch-Irish would not go unless they 'vere 
compelled by force. They would not be volunteers, and the 
Judge, without knowing it, is making an argument to show 
that his own people were cowards and would not fight for 
their own safety. 

But I must rescue the Scotch-Irish from such an unskil- 
fid defender. They were not cowards. They had reasons 
for not going with Bouquet, and I have given those reasons 
in " Pennsylvania : Colony and Commonwealth." No one 
has ever suggested that they were cowards except the Judge. 

In another part of his tirade he says : " The settlers in 
the Kittochtiny Valley seem to be the special objects of 
Mr. Fisher's antipathy." That is a pure assumption on the 
part of the Judge. I cannot find that I mention them specially 
anywhere in the book, and there was no reason why I should 
make any special mention of them separate from the rest of 
the Scotch-Irish of the Province. I have no antipathy to 
them. On the contrary, I think they were then, and most of 
them are to-day, among the very best of the Scotch-Irish 
people. 

But the Judge was making a speech at the close of a 
banquet and had to manufacture it out of nothing, and this 
assumption about my antipathy was dragged in to bolster up 
another assumption that I had in some way accused the 
Kittochtiny people of murdering Indians and cheating them 
out of their land. I never accused them of anything of the 
kind. 

"I challenge Mr. Fisher," he says, "to show a murderer 
an outrage upon an Indian in that valley committed by the hand 
of a Scotch-Irish settler during all that period from 1730 to 



6 

1755. I challenge him to show a single complaint of unjust 
appropriation of land east of the Tuscarora Mountain in that 
time." ■ 

The first clialleuge is a very absurd one, because I never 
said that the settlers of the Kittochtiny A'''alley committed 
murder or outras^es on Indians in that valley ; nor have I said 
anywhere that any of the Scotch-Irish in any part of the 
Province committed murders or outrages on Indians between 
1730 and 1755. That was a period of peace before the wars 
bes^an, and there are pages and pages in my book showing 
that it was a period of j)eace all over the province. Such a 
challenge and such talk are totally irrelevant. 

In the second challenge if the Judge had confined him- 
self to the land east of the Kittochtiny range instead of oast 
of the Tuscarora, I might have said that I knew of none that 
had been improperly appropriated. I never said there was any, 
although there may have been, for all I know. But as he has 
gone farther westward, and said laud east of the Tuscarora 
range,I can say that,wiiile I never made such an assertion in my 
book, there was, according to authority, some laud improperly 
appropriated close to the Tuscarora range, and on the east 
side of it, in the Path Valley, as it was called, which lay 
between the Tuscarora and the Kittochtiny ; and this I will 
show presently. 

In " Pennsylvania : Colony and Commonwealth," I have 
nowhere said that there was any unjust appropriation of land 
in the Kittochtiny Valley. I do not even raise the question. 
What I do say, however, is that the Scotch-Irish and Ger- 
man frontiersmen were guilty, in numerous instances, of going 
upon land and settling there before it had been purchased 
from the Indians, and this caused a great deal of irritation. 
If the Judge means to deny this statement, he takes a great 
deal on himself; for it is vouched for by every one who has 
the slightest knowledge of our Colonial history. 

The principal authority is a book called " The Aliena- 
tion of the Indians," written by Charles Thomson, who lived 
in those times, was deeply and actively interested in the 



Indian qnestion and thoroughly familiar with it. He was 

afterwards Secretary of the Continental Congress, and a man 

very niuch respected. He was a Scotcii-Irishman, it is said, 

and he reports the Indians as saying, in the treaty of 1742 : 

"Your people," say they to the Governor, " daily settle 
on these lands and spoil our hunting. We must insist on your 
removing them ; as you know, they have no right to settle to the 
northward of the Kittochtinny Hills In particular we renew 
our complaints against some people who are settled at Juniata, 
a hranch of the Susquehanna, and all along the banks of that 
rivei- as far as Mahaniay " ("Alienation of the Indians," p. 49), 

In another passage he describes how the intrusion by 
the frontiersmen on the Indian land in 1750 became so out- 
rageous that it was feared there would be a massacre, unless 
these intruders were at once removed. 

"After this Mr. Peters proceeded, and being accompanied 
with those Indians, broke up the settlements in Sherman's 
Valley, on Juniata, at Aucquick (alias Aughwick), in the Path 
Valley and Big Cove, which all lie beyond the Kittpchtinny 
Hills, everywhere dispossessing the people * * * The 
people of the little cove which was a part of the unpurchased 
lands just on the bordersof Maryland, presented him a petition, 
addressed to the Governor, praying that they might be allowed 
to remain there till the purchase was made of the lands from 
the Indians " (p. 71). 

It will be observed that he says that there was unlawful 
intrusion iu the Path Valley, which lay between the Kittoch- 
tiny and the Tuscarora Mountains. Many of the places he 
mentions lay immediately to the westward and northward of 
the Kitiochtiny Valley, and all the places were close to the 
Scotch-Irish settlements. If the Judge really thinks that 
the Scotch-Irish never intruded on Indian land, I cannot 
envy him his credulity. 

Thomson goes on to tell how the intrusion grew worse 
and worse in spite of all efforts to prevent it. 

" In short, so little effect had this that those who had been 
spared were spirited up to stay, and others went and settled by 
them, so that in a few years the settlements in the Indian 
country were more numerous and farther extended than ever " 
(p. 73). 



In another of his outbursts, the Judge says : 

" From Mr. Fisher's standpoint, it is a fact worthy of 
being recorded on the page of history that no Scotch-Irish of 
the settlement joined Bouquet's ranlvs; but from his standpoint 
it is a fact too insignificant for mention that in the previou^s 
campaign this same settlement sent 2500 of its chosen men, 
under the lead of John Armstrong, to march in the van of 
Forbes' army to the Ohio." 

The whole number of Pennsylvania troops that went 
with Forbes to the Ohio was 2700, and if I had known 
tliat all of them but two hundred came from the 
Kittochtiny Valley alone, I should certainly have been 
delighted to eni-ich my book with such a wonderful state- 
ment. But 1 did not know it and I do not know it yet. 
I cannot find anyone competent to jndge of such things 
who ever heard of it. I have asked .some of the gentlemen 
at the Historical Society, men who have spent their lives in 
studying the colonial history of Pennsylvania, and they 
laughed at it. 

The Judge .scarcely docs justice to the other Scotch-Insh 
in Pennsylvania. Is it possible that if the 8000 people of the 
Kittochtiny Valley .sent 2500, the other thousands of Scotch- 
Irish outside of the valley and .scattered all over the State 
sent only two hundred ? 

And then what becomes of the Germans ? They were 
far more numerous in Pennsylvania than the Scotch-Irish. 
And what becomes of the English Presbyterians, the Episco- 
palians and the plain Scotch, all of whom were very earnest 
again.st the French and Indians ? If the Judge will take 
the trouble to look at the few broken and incomplete lists of 
companies that were enlisted in the year 1758 and are col- 
lected in Pennsylvania Archives, Volume II, second .series, 
pages 549, etc., he will see, as he reads along, many German 
names, and in the few instances where the residences are given 
he will find that the troops came from all parts of the State. 

In one of the companies the residences are given after 
quite a number of the names, and I have counted them — 
one from Virginia, one from New Jersey, two from Dela- 



ware, two from Lancaster, four from Philadelphia, four from 
Maryland, eighteen from Chester, and one from Cumberland. 

As I have said, these records are not perfect. They do 
not give all the trooj)s, and those that are given are incom- 
plete. But they were all that could be found. Li' that care- 
ful study of which he tells us has brought into the Judge's 
possession the missing records showing exactly where all the 
soldiers of that' year came from, the Historical Society or the 
Department at Harrisburg will be very glad to receive 
them, or to be allowed to copy them. They will be the most 
important information that has been received for many a 
year, and the genealogists will be delighted. 

The Judge's 2500 is too large a proportion, even for the 
population of his valley, which he says was 8000. Supposing 
that he is right for once in something and that 8OOO was the 
correct population of the valley, 2500 would be more than a 
fourth of the people and almost a third. A tifth is as 
large a proportion of military men as any community is 
supposed to furnish. But a flfih is merely the theoretical 
estimate of political economists, gives the voting element 
more accurately than the military element, and is seldom 
obtained in practice. ^Moreover the Judge says that the 
2500 were "chosen men," and therefore they could not have 
included the boys and old men who would of necessity have 
" marched in the van " with Forbes if more than a fourth of 
the population left their homes. 

The whole population of Pennsylvania, at that time? 
was 200,000. So the Judge would have us believe that the 
8000 people of his happ3' valley furnished 2.'j00 of the 
2700 men, and the remaining 192,000 of the people of the 
province furnished only two hundred. 

The scenes of many of Trollope's novels are laid in an 
imaginary county, of which he had drawn a map for himself 
with the residences of all his characters on it ; and he boasts 
in his autobiography that he had added a new county to 
England. The Judge has added a new valley to Pennsyl- 
vania. 



• 10 

By the way, what does he mean by saying that his 2500 
" marched in the van of Forbes' army " ? Besides the Penn- 
sylvania troops, that army of about 7000 men was composed " 
of British regulars, Virginia troops, Maryland troops and. 
North Carolina troops. If the Judge has any information 
about the order of march in that scramble through tlie woods 
and mountains which Parkman so vividly describes, his 
Scotch-Irish generosity should furnish us with it, for it would 
be extremely interesting. 

Does he mean that his 2500 were alone given the 
honor of the van because their valley had broken all the 
records of history, and that the remaining two hundred Penn- 
sylvanians were in the rear? (>r did all the Pennsylvanians 
always march in the van? Proud honor for our State it 
would be; and if it is true, let us have the authority. Park- 
man, relying on a description by one of the officei'S, in the 
Gentleman's 3Ioc/azine (Vol. 29, p. 171), says that when the 
army was approaching Fort Pitt the provincials were on one 
of the wings, apparently the left wing. 

I have already said that the Judge claims Provost Smith 
as a Scotch-Irishman. But he was not. lie was a Scotch- 
man, born in Scotland and educated at the University of 
Aberdeen, and never lived in Ireland. Itmightalso possibly 
be inferred from what he says that James Wilson was Scotch- 
Irish. But he also, like Smith, was a Scotchman who had 
never lived in Ireland. 

He says, however, that Wilson's "casting vote placed 
Penns} Ivania on the side of the Revolution." I suppose he 
must refer to the vote taken in the Continental Congress in 
adopting the Declaration of Independence. But Wilson's 
biographers do not claim this honor for him. 

According to the account of Wilson, given in the " Biog- 
raphy of the Signers " (Vol. VI, p. 133), the first vote of the 
Pennsylvania delegation was: Franklin, Wilson and Mor- 
ton, yes; Humphreys, Willing, Robert Morris and Dickin- 
son, no; so Pennsylvania, on that vote, stood opposed to the 
adoption of a Declaration of Independence. On the final 



11 

vote, however, Dickinson and Robert Morris were absent and 
not voting, so it stood Franklin, Wilson and Morton, yes ; 
Hnmphrevs and Willing, no. Wilson's vote was no more a 
casting vote than Franklin's or Morton's, and the vote was 
carried in the affirmative l)y the absence of ^Morris and Dick- 
inson, who had previously voted no. 

I must also protest against Dr. Robert Fllis Thompson, 
who said in his speech that I describe the Scotch-Irish as 
scattering in the mountains and going nowhere else in the 
State. I will quote what I said : 

" They did- not, however, all seek the frontier, as has been 
supposed; man}' of them, especially in Pennsylvania, remained 
in the East. In modern times many of theni have settled in 
the southwestern section of Philadelphia. * * * I'hev 
scattered themselves to some extent all over the State, and 
members of the race can now be found in almost every part of 
it. A large number of them went up on the Lehigh. Some of 
the first arrivals went into Bucks Count}^ and Lancaster 
County. They also occupied Octorara Creek, Pequea, Donegal 
and Paxton" ("Making of Pennsylvania," p. 1(53). 

Several of the speakers at the banquet said that the New 
England people had been allowed to write the history of the 
country long enough, and had written it too much in their 
own way, and that it was now time for the Scotch-Irish to 
write it in their way. W^ell, if the report of Judge Stewart's 
speech is a sample of the way the Scotch-Irish will write his- 
tory, our fate is a sad one. I think an apology is due from 
the Society to the whole country for allowing such ridiculous 
statements to masquerade under the name of history in the 
printed report of their proceedings. 

The reason that the New Englanders have been able to 
write the history of the country, and that the others have 
not, is because that, while taking care of their own point of 
view, they have written on the whole with reasonable 
accuracy, while the others have usually produced miserable 
trash for which no one has any respect and which few care 
to read. 

I have no dislike for or antipathy to the Scotch- 
Irish. On the contrary, I admire them when they behave 



12 

themselves; especially the old type who were usually right 
with their facts, and I believe most people admire them. In 
my two books on Pennsylvania, I have given them full 
credit for all their merits, and as I was writing history, and not 
making after-dinner speeches, I have set down likewise their 
defects and mistakes; and I have treated the Germans, the 
Welsh, the Episcopalians, the Quakers, and the Connecticut 
element in the same way. If I have done injustice to any of 
these elements of our poj^ulation, either in too much praise 
or too much blame, I should be glad to know it. 

The complaint the Scotch-Irish are continually making, 
that their merits are not appreciated by the world, I cannot 
understand. I have never seen any signs of it. Their merit 
was recognized one hundred years ago and is to-day. They 
played their pait well, and we all know what it was. What 
people object to is, their claim that they did everything. They 
did not n)ake the Revolution and the Constitution. Washing- 
ton, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Henry, Madison, 
Hamilton, the Lees, the liutledges, Generals Greene, Gates, 
Lafayette, Knox, Putnam, Schuyler, Miftiinand Muhlenberg, 
were not Scotch-Irishmen, although Armstrong, Stark, Reed 
and some others, of good service but minor fame, were Scotch- 
Irish, and Wayne was descended from an English Episco- 
palian family who had lived among the Scotch-Irish in 
Ireland. The Scotch-Irish had no Tories among them. 
They were always willing to enlist in the Continental Army, 
and no one has ever denied it. 

People also object to their claiming as their own, men 
who are not Scotch-Irish at all, and to their claiming dis- 
tinguished men, who have only a small portion of Scotch-Irish 
blood in them. On the other hand, I have never heard any 
one deny the service of the rank and file of the race as fron- 
tiersmen in Colonial times, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, 
afterwards in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, and in still 
later times in the religions, industrial, agricultural and politi- 
cal interests of those same regions. 

SYDNEY G. FISHER. 






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